


exit, pursued by a bear

by sunshine_states



Series: a crown of roses in your hair [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Not A Fix-It, character critical but only insofar as the writers wrote everyone out of character, more of a burn-it, very briefly alluded to but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 22:11:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18903655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshine_states/pseuds/sunshine_states
Summary: Mistakes were made.





	exit, pursued by a bear

**Author's Note:**

> This barely counts as a fic, honestly. It's more of an extended rant about bad plot and worse politics.

The first thing that happened was that Dorne declared independence.

The King was not surprised (the King was never surprised), although his Council was furious. There was little they could do, however; between the Sack of King's Landing, the Army of the Dead, and the endless, grinding wars of past decade, their forces were well and truly depleted. Dorne, sunlit, patient Dorne, had tended its own army like a garden, and even the lowest soldier in the meanest garrison in Westeros knew that if it came to open battle, the Five Kingdoms would lose.

The second thing that happened was that Yara Greyjoy commenced raiding the coastlines once again.

They were strange raids; virtually no raping, precious few attacks on civilian targets. The Iron Queen, as they called her, took a very dim view of both. But these were the Ironborn, embittered by Bran Stark's seeming forgetfulness of their dead prince and itching to see battle once again. The poorly-manned watchtowers on the sea were burned like so many morsels of wood, and all the feeble efforts of the Four Kingdoms proved useless against a well-armed, well-trained, absolutely furious seafaring people.

The King's serene mask never cracked. He seemed to belong to another world entirely - in fact, the people whispered, he was a northern sorcerer who had once been a weirwood tree. He was a raven with three eyes who had cloaked himself in the skin of a man. He was a demon sent by the Queen in the North to destroy them, for hadn't they been destroyed? Hadn't King's Landing been burned almost down to the foundations, their shipments of spices cut off from rebellious Dorne, their fathers and brothers and sons slaughtered in Ironborn raids? Hadn't a Stark caused the War of the Five Kings? This monarch - this boy, who never smiled, who told his captain of the guard what he'd eaten for breakfast and once revealed a nobleman's infidelity before the entire court - this was just one more Northern demon.

The Queen in the North watched tensions grow with unease. Somehow it came out that she had broken a Godswood vow, and before long her own bannermen were calling her _Oathbreaker_ behind her back. They obeyed her because there was no other Stark left to follow, but she saw the contempt in their eyes. She had done right to tell Tyrion the truth, she thought, late at night when she could not sleep. The ash of King's Landing was the proof. But when the other kingdoms refused to make treaties with the North for fear she'd go back on her word again, when winter came once more and blanketed their hungry land in ice, when an elderly crofter spat at her feet - well. Then she had to wonder if her father hadn't had a point about honor.

Perhaps in their haste to patch together a government, the Hand of the King and his allies had forgotten that managing the budget of the realm required practice and principle, and the current Master of Coin was not noticeably endowed with either. Soon, the Four Kingdoms could add bankruptcy and civil unrest to the backstabbing, rumor-mongering, and marauding that were slowly but surely breaking down the integrity of the King's court. 

And then, of course, the dragon came back.


End file.
